Archives for December 2012

December 2012 - Page 11 of 17 - Money Morning - Only the News You Can Profit From

QE4 is Coming; Will Inflation Follow?

Many observers expect the U.S. Federal Reserve to announce another round of quantitative easing, or QE4, this afternoon following the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting.

The consensus is that the Fed will purchase an additional $45 billion of bonds from the secondary market each month.

That means the Fed would replace the monthly $45 billion used to swap short-term Treasuries for long-term Treasuries under Operation Twist, which expires at the end of this month, with outright bond purchases.

In addition to the $45 billion a month used in Operation Twist, the Federal Reserve Bank has been purchasing $40 billion of mortgage-debt securities monthly in its continued effort to boost growth.

In total, the market expects the Fed to continue to purchase $85 billion worth of bonds on the secondary market each month for the foreseeable future.

Now some investors fear the Fed with QE4 will seal the deal on skyrocketing inflation – but it takes more than increased money supply to raise prices.

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Is 2013 Going to be Worse than 2012? - Real Time Insight

Optimism and Pessimism are the flavors of choice in this RTI.  I wanted to show everybody the latest consensus forecasts for real GDP growth in major world economies.   I arranged them below.   Top performers are at the front of the pack.   China GDP 2012 7.7%, 2013 8.1%     (Better) India GDP 2012 5.6%, […]

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Bull of the Day: Amgen (AMGN) - Bull of the Day

Amgen Inc's (AMGN) third quarter EPS of $1.66 per share was 23 cents above the Zacks Consensus Estimate and 19.4% above the year-ago period. Higher revenues, cost discipline and a lower share count contributed to the year-over-year increase in earnings. Revenues increased 9.5% to $4,319 million, well above the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $4,199 million. […]

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2013 Oil Price Forecast: Why Oil Remains a "Must-Have" Profit Play Next Year

One of the most important topics we discussed in Moscow last week were the various forecasts of where crude oil prices are likely to be in 2013.

These 2013 oil price forecasts were all over the place, owing to the high level of uncertainty on a number of basic elements.

According to the Russian Ministry of Energy, or Minenergo, the "official" government estimate has oil prices low – at about $80 a barrel in 2013.

However, there were other estimates floating about. The Ministry of Finance (MinFin) set up what can only be described as a recession approach. That figure puts oil prices at $62-$65 a barrel.

Then there was the Ministry of Economic Development (MED). MED considered both domestic and external trade considerations. The estimate coming from this ministry was lower than that of Minenergo, but at $75 a barrel was higher than that of MinFin.

Against this backdrop of competing forecasts made by battling Russian ministries, estimates from the outside including my own are much, much different-as in decidedly to the upside.

Granted, all of the non-Russian suggestions cite the three unknowns limiting the cost of crude elsewhere: the fiscal cliff, the Eurozone debt crisis, and the expected levels of productivity and demand coming from China.

Nonetheless, a strong consensus did emerge from North American and European experts during our sidebar conversations in Moscow.

The overwhelming view was that oil prices will be moving higher next year, although the continuing volatility will guarantee that this is hardly going to be a straight line advance.

Even still, there will be a number of factors that will push Brent and WTI prices as much as 20% higher next year-particularly in the first quarter.

Here's why oil will still remain a "must-have" investment next year.

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How Gold Miners Can Effectively Leverage Gold Prices

Gazing into their crystal balls last week, Wall Street firms interpreted differing futures for gold next year.

Morgan Stanley awarded gold the "best commodity for 2013" while Goldman Sachs called the end of the metal's hot streak.

After seeing 11 consecutive years of positive performance from gold price, one needs to be wary of research analysts' price forecasts, as they have consistently underestimated the shifting dynamics driving the precious metal higher.

Take a look at analysts' annual predictions of gold prices, which is "a telling picture," CEO Nick Holland of Gold Fields told the crowd at a mining conference last summer.

From 2006 through 2011, Bloomberg's contributing analysts have forecasted that future gold prices would be lower. "The analysts who keep telling us the gold price is going down have been wrong seven years out of seven. That's a remarkable track record!" says Holland.

Take a look at the chart…

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How to Buy Silver: The Best is Yet to Come in 2013

While gold, with its sky-high prices, gets most of the media attention, investors should be just as interested in how to buy silver.

Silver turned in a solid performance in the second half of 2012, rising from a June 28 low of $26.13 an ounce to its recent reading above $33.00. And, to steal a line from poet Robert Browning (or, if you prefer, Frank Sinatra), "the best is yet to come."

At least that's how Money Morning's Global Resources Specialist Peter Krauth sees it. He thinks the "poor man's precious metal" should set a new all-time nominal price record in 2013, potentially moving as high as $54.00 an ounce.

Krauth cites four factors in making this prediction:

  • The continued high reading in the gold/silver ratio, which indicates silver is undervalued relative to gold based on historical norms.
  • The prospect that four more years of President Barack Obama's policies will prove inflationary, devaluing the U.S. dollar and thus boosting the prices of hard assets like the precious metals.
  • Growing investment demand as more fund managers purchase the metal to back a growing number of new exchange-traded fund (ETF) offerings.
  • A continuing increase in industrial demand for silver, which is used in everything from solar-power generation and water purification to hygiene and specialized medicine.

Few other assets currently enjoy such broad bullish support – and that means now's the ideal time to either add silver to your portfolio or increase your existing level of exposure to the metal.

Here are a few tips on how to buy silver.

How to Buy Silver

As we told you in last week's story on how to buy gold, purists view holding actual physical precious metals like gold and silver as the only true means of hedging against inflation and gaining an effective long-term store of value.

HSBC Fine for Money Laundering is Largest Bank Penalty in U.S. History

The HSBC fine for money laundering charges reached a record $1.92 billion as Europe's biggest bank settled charges in an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department.

The fine is the largest penalty ever imposed on a bank from the Justice Department.

The Justice Department had accused HSBC Holdings PLC of illegally laundering money for Mexican drug cartels and with violating sanctions by doing business with countries including Iran, Cuba, Libya, Sudan and Myanmar, according to Reuters.

In a statement, HSBC Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver said: "We accept responsibility for our past mistakes. We have said we are profoundly sorry for them, and we do so again. The HSBC of today is a fundamentally different organization from the one that made those mistakes."

Under new senior leadership over the past two years, Gulliver said, "we have been taking concrete steps to put right what went wrong and to participate actively with government authorities in bringing to light and addressing these matters."

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This Week's FOMC Meeting: Why to Expect More Stimulus

Investors should expect welcome news from the U.S. Federal Reserve Wednesday at the end of this week's two-day FOMC meeting.

As central bankers gathered Tuesday for the last policy meeting of the year, expectations were high that Fed Chief Ben Bernanke and his cohorts will announce a large scale asset purchase plan to replace the soon-to-end Operation Twist, introduced in September 2011.

The Fed hopes additional stimulus will finally boost growth and the employment level. With the current unemployment level at an elevated 7.7% — a number that economists say will be revised higher in the coming weeks – the weak labor market remains a grave concern.

At recent meetings, the Fed indicated that it will continue QE3, the policy of buying $45 billion in mortgage-backed securities each month until it sees a significant and sustained improvement in the employment scene – which is unlikely to come anytime soon.

Together with Operation Twist, the two programs added some $85 billion in long-term bonds to the Fed's balance sheet each month.

The aim, the Fed said in a statement, "should put downward pressure on longer-term interest rates, support mortgage markets, and help to make broader financial conditions more accommodative."

The central bank has also stressed it would employ its other policy tools "if the labor market does not improve substantially."

While the Fed did not elaborate on what those tools are, it maintains it still has plenty of ammo left and stands ready to pull the trigger when and if necessary.

It looks like now is the time.

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Green Mountain Coffee Roasters - Aggressive Growth

Earnings estimates for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc. (GMCR) have trended higher following its robust fiscal fourth quarter report late last month, which included a positive earnings surprise of more than 36% and an enhanced outlook for fiscal 2013. As a result, all 11 estimates for its current fiscal year have advanced in the last […]

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The Bare, Naked Truth About The Federal Reserve's Socialist Agenda

The top line story, according to the FDIC's latest Quarterly Banking Review, is that the majority of U.S. banks are in better shape today than they have been in years.

The untold story is that when the Federal Reserve is done transitioning the United States from capitalism to socialism, the few dozen banks that remain in America will all be profitable until they need bailing out again, but will never die and live on in infamy.

Is that just hyperbole or some wild conspiracy theory? It's neither. Unfortunately, it's the bare, naked truth about the Fed.

It doesn't matter that you didn't know the Federal Reserve System was the brainchild of a handful of the world's most powerful bankers.

Or that all of them took a secret train from New Jersey to Jekyll Island, Georgia (owned by J.P. Morgan) in 1910 aboard Rhode Island Senator Nelson Aldrich's private car to devise and orchestrate the creation of the Federal Reserve.

Or that Aldrich was an investment associate of J.P. Morgan, that his son-in-law was John D. Rockefeller, Jr., or that he was the political spokesman for big business and banking interests in Congress.

It doesn't matter if you don't know who the powerful bankers are today that run the Fed's twelve district banks. Or that the Fed's New York Bank conducts all its open market operations with a bunch of favored big banks it protects (Case in point, MF Global).

Or that one former Chairman of the New York Bank's Board, who was also and still is a Goldman Sachs board member, resigned from the Fed when it was discovered he bought $3 million worth of Goldman's stock right before the Fed made sure Goldman wouldn't have to go out of business at the height of the financial crisis.

What matters, is that without the Federal Reserve the banking system in the United States would be more honest, more competitive and less of a risk to the economy than it is now.

And what really matters, is understanding the Federal Reserve could never exist and do what it does in an open democracy, and that its agenda of socializing risks (making taxpayers eat bankers' losses) and privatizing their profits (letting them keep their bonuses) for the benefit of its club members (the banks) means the Federal Reserve has to transform America to a socialist model in order to maintain its own growth and ultimate power.

Of course, it's not a stretch to see how the Fed's socialist agenda will eventually encompass most of the American economy over time.

But to keep it simple, let's look at how the Fed has already done that to the benefit of its primary constituents: banks and bankers.

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